Here's the cast of Peaky Blinders on the red carpet as series creator Steven Knight reveals he has just finished writing the next installment of the cult series – and it's “the best yet”.

He confirmed that filming will start in March 2017 and that Tom Hardy will return as Alfie Solomons, along with Irish actor Cillian Murphy as Birmingham gang leader Tommy Shelby.

Birmingham native Knight told Deadline: “I’m very, very excited because I’m just completing episode six of series four, which again I think is the best yet.

“And I’m loving it and it’s not like work, it’s not like a labour, I love doing it, and the boys are coming back and they’re loving the scripts, and we start shooting in March.”

Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders (Image: Tiger Aspect)

And will Hardy be in it?

“Of course. We can’t do it without Alfie.”

Episode: Peaky Blinders III Ep 6 (Image: BBC)

The pair have been working together again on the new BBC1 Saturday night drama Taboo, which Knight wrote and in which Hardy stars as African adventurer James Delaney who returns to London in 1814 to take over his dead father’s business.

Knight mentioned that the idea of Taboo actually came before they worked together on Peaky Blinders or Locke, the film Knight wrote and directed and Hardy starred in.

Tom Hardy's return to Peaky Blinders (Image: BBC)

At the suggestion that the pair are a new Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, he says: “Well, I wouldn’t put myself in that bracket, but it’s one of those things.”

And he reveals that, somewhat surprisingly, they are not really firm friends.

Tom Hardy's return to Peaky Blinders (Image: BBC)

“I think what helps is that we don’t socialise, we don’t really know each other, we purely work together. I think that helps because there has been no formality of friendship, the politeness of friendship, so we can just work directly on the work that’s ahead of us.

“If you’ve got an actor like that who wants to perform your work, then you should do it, and hopefully Tom likes to do the work that I do, so long may it continue.”